Pseudopupils are pretty neat. What you're actually seeing is
ommatidia that are oriented directly toward the viewer (camera
lens). Instead of seeing the pigmented walls of the ommatidium you
are seeing right into the photoreceptors. The dark spots will even
appear to follow you as you move around the insect but the insect is
not actually moving anything. Some spiders can move their retina to
look around though, which is pretty awesome.

The new online edition makes The Feynman Lectures on Physics available in HTML5. The text “has been designed for ease of reading on devices of any size or shape,” and you can zoom into text, figures and equations without degradation.

More at the link. The image is my screencap of part of one of the pages.

"It turns out that popular medical dramas don't always portray
medical treatment accurately. A new study found that seizure care in
particular was depicted appropriately less than half the time on major
fictional medical shows...
The study looked at the depiction of seizure care for all episodes of "Grey's Anatomy," House, M.D.," and "Private Practice," and the last five seasons of "ER." The research will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's annual meeting in Toronto, Ontario, in April.

In
nearly 46 percent of seizure cases, characters on these shows delivered
inappropriate treatments such as holding the person down, trying to
stop involuntary movements or putting something in the person's mouth,
the study said. The shows did show proper treatment about 29 percent of
the time, and in the remaining 25 percent of the time, the accuracy of
the portrayal couldn't be determined...

False depictions of CPR are probably more alarming than misrepresented seizure care, Sanders said. Normally, seizure care is left to doctors,
who don't get their information on treatments from television. But CPR
is a procedure that lay people do learn how to do, and they might get
false impressions from watching dramas, she said."

Militarized local SWAT teams can be tricked by hackers into raiding homes of innocent people. The Vice video above illustrates the problem, which is also discussed at Salon:

“The caller claimed to have shot two co-workers, held others hostage,
and threatened to shoot them,” the Littleton Police Department said in a
statement. “He stated that if the officers entered he would shoot them
as well.”

What the cameras captured is a perilous new prank known
as “swatting,” or making a false report to get the SWAT team to invade a
rival gamer’s space. As evidenced by the Vice News report below, this
can involve disguising the caller identity and making some potentially
life-threatening claims.

The seat was discovered by Dr Birley in the deep pre-Hadrianic
trenches at Vindolanda. There are many examples of stone and marble
toilet seat benches from across the Roman Empire but this is believed to
be the only surviving wooden seat, almost perfectly preserved in the
anaerobic, oxygen free, conditions which exist at Vindolanda.

Dr
Birley said that in the chilly conditions of what was the northernmost
limits of the Empire, a wooden seat would have been preferable to stone...

The seat has been well used and was decommissioned from its original
location and discarded amongst the rubbish left behind in the fort
before the construction of Hadrian’s Wall started in the early Second
Century. "

"...one way Americans can avoid buying private insurance or paying into the Affordable Care Act.

The deal, made possible by a little-known provision
in the health-care law, has one particularly important requirement: The
Duff household of nine must abstain from general debauchery.

Samaritan Ministries,
a health-care sharing group, will charge its national network to cover
the family’s medical bills, but only if they agree to forsake
binge-drinking, extramarital sex, illegal drugs and tobacco (with the
exception of celebratory, post-birth cigars). The organization describes itself as a “Biblical approach” to health-care, guided by Galatians 6:2: Bear one another’s burdens...

Samaritan’s rules, however, extend beyond the religious realm to the
practical one of saving money. Sinful behavior threatens more than a
soul’s entrance to Heaven, Duff and his cohorts believe: It damages the
earthly body — and amplifies the price of health-care.

“Christians are just healthier people,” he says. “Think of all the physical problems we can attribute to a sinful lifestyle.”

Obamacare,
the Samaritan contract states, is undesirable because it covers costs
that “result from immoral practices,” such as STD treatments or
out-of-wedlock births. The law creates a moral dilemma for Duff, who now
works as an assistant pastor in downtown Omaha.

“Simply put,” he says, “I don’t want to pay for that or encourage it in any way.

American League teams have won the majority of interleague games for 10 consecutive years; this year will likely be the 11th. Graphic from the Wall Street Journal, where there is speculation about the reasons for this trend.

Theories over the decades have included
sporadic hurricane-force winds when the surface is covered with rain
water, or rocks carried across the mud by small rafts of ice, or UFOs.

But
until the Norrises had an incredible stroke of luck that day last
December, no one had scientifically verified the phenomenon. The
findings were formally presented today in the online scientific journal
PLOS ONE.

This video, posted at GrindTV has details and video of the rocks moving.

Additional details at that link (hat tip to reader Stan Banos for sending it in).

As part of the Slithering Stones Research Initiative, researchers custom
built motion-activated GPS units and fitted them into 15 rocks and
placed them on the playa in the winter of 2011, with permission from the
National Park Service. They expected it would take five to 10 years
before something happened.

Ralph Lorenz, one of the paper’s authors from Applied Physics Laboratory
at John Hopkins University, called it “the most boring experiment
ever.”

27 August 2014

Salting roads in winter can tweak the physiques of butterflies the next summer.

Milkweeds and oaks, plants that caterpillars graze on, collected from alongside a country road
carried higher sodium concentrations than the same species growing at least 100 meters from the
splash and drift of deicing salt, says Emilie Snell-Rood of the University of Minnesota in St. Paul.

Monarch (Danaus plexippus) caterpillars raised on the sodium-boosted plants turned into males
with extra thoracic muscles and females with bigger eyes and probably bigger brains than
butterflies reared on the more distant foliage, Snell-Rood and her colleagues found.

A different
butterfly, the cabbage white, echoed these his-and-hers effects when reared on a sodium-boosted
lab diet, researchers report June 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

So is road salt good for butterflies? “I do not want that to be the take-home message,” Snell-Rood
says. Instead, she says, the study demonstrates for the first time that road salt can alter how
animals develop physically.

Text from Science News, with a tip of the hat to reader Bradley Ruben for bringing it to my attention. Photo from our yard.

The blue line in the chart displays total annual print newspaper advertising revenue (for the categories national, retail and classified) based on actual annual data from 1950 to 2011, and estimated annual revenue for 2012 using quarterly data through the second quarter of this year, from the Newspaper Association of America (NAA). The advertising revenues have been adjusted for inflation using the CPI, and appear in the chart as
millions of constant 2012 dollars. Estimated print advertising revenues of $19.0 billion in 2012 will be the lowest annual amount spent on print newspaper advertising since the NAA started tracking ad revenue in 1950...

In the photography category of this blog, I've occasionally posted photos of beach scenes from the turn of the last century, and I suspect a modern person's responses are "what uncomfortable clothing to wear" and "what unattractive clothing to wear."

With regard to the latter (?mis)perception, I offer the above photo, from the camera of Alfred Stieglitz (‘Ellen Koeniger’, 1916, gelatin silver photograph, 11.1 x 9.1, J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles), as a reminder that when wet, those staid bathing costumes must have shocked some Edwardian-era sensibilities.

The iceberg lay at latitude 41-46N, longitude 50-14W, off the coast
of Newfoundland. Newspaper reports of the time said that the visible
part of the iceberg – that above the waterline – was anywhere between 50
to 100 feet high and 200 to 400 feet long.

Reports
say he spotted a line of red paint along the bottom of the iceberg
which experts believe show where it had made contact with Titanic.

Journal.ie
reports that the steward was not aware at the time that it had been the
iceberg that sunk the Titanic but the location, the marks on the
iceberg and Titanic survivors’ descriptions of the iceberg triangulated
to confirm that it was.

For a brief time Thursday and Friday the parking regulation signs outside Linwood E. Howe Elementary School topped 15 feet.

The signs were meant to clarify a new drop-off and pick-up procedure
for when classes resume at the school, but as CBS2’s Juan
Fernandez reported, neighbors just found them confusing.

Mayor Meghan Sahli-Wells said the plan was for the signs to only be displayed temporarily. “They just didn’t look temporary,” she said. “So they were going to
be taken down. And it looked like … whoa. It was pretty impressive.”

Only about 100 of these original "first-phase" chief's blankets are thought to exist.

Details at The Telegraph. At the risk of throwing a wet blanket on a feel-good story, one has to wonder whether his ancestor in the 1860s spent four years' salary to purchase the blanket, as is postulated in the video.

IVANPAH DRY LAKE, Calif. — Workers at a state-of-the-art solar plant
in the Mojave Desert have a name for birds that fly through the plant’s
concentrated sun rays — “streamers,” for the smoke plume that comes from
birds that ignite in midair.

Federal wildlife investigators who
visited the BrightSource Energy plant last year and watched as birds
burned and fell, reporting an average of one “streamer” every two
minutes, are urging California officials to halt the operator’s
application to build a still-bigger version.

The investigators
want the halt until the full extent of the deaths can be assessed.
Estimates per year now range from a low of about a thousand by
BrightSource to 28,000 by an expert for the Center for Biological
Diversity environmental group...

More than 300,000 mirrors, each the size of a garage door, reflect solar
rays onto three boiler towers each looming up to 40 stories high.

Federal wildlife officials said Ivanpah might act as a “mega-trap” for
wildlife, with the bright light of the plant attracting insects, which
in turn attract insect-eating birds that fly to their death in the
intensely focused light rays...

BrightSource also is offering $1.8 million in compensation for anticipated bird deaths at Palen, Desmond said.

It's not clear to whom the company would pay the compensation. Presumably to the families of the dead birds.

Most of us Conspiracy Researchers will recall the case of Apollo 10
Astronauts : Tom Stafford, Gene Cernan and John Young discussing the
“outer-spacey” music they head while on the far side of the moon. This
music happened during the LOS (loss of signal) period that occurred
while
the communications between themselves and mission control were
temporarily unavailable due to their position behind the moon. Gene
Cernan is the
first to hear the music (in the LM) and the transcripts shows that he
radios John Young in the CSM to confirm he is hearing the same thing.
John young
then replies “Yea, I got it too…….and see who was outside?” Not only
does JY confirm he hears it, but look at his following statement, “and
see who is outside” ! Now who could be “outside” the space vessels?!
More importantly John Young is inferring that there may be a connection
between the “music” and “who is outside” of their crafts. After a few
minutes of dialogue regarding the mission Gene Cernan brings up the
topic again, “boy, that sure is strange music” in which John Young
replies “ Were going to have to find out about that. Nobody will Believe
us.”

During their next orbit of the dark side the “music” RETURNS. Addressing
Tom Stafford this time Gene Cernan asks “You hear music Tom? That crazy
whistling?” In which Tom Stafford replies “I can hear it.” Gene replies
“that’s really weird” and Tom replies “it is.” Further on
Gene AGAIN brings up the subject by stating “Listen to eerie music”.
They even continue random dialogue regarding the music and how eerie and
weird it was, and that nobody is going to believe them.

More at the link, where you can access Apollo 10 transcripts and experiences by other astronauts. Here is one possible explanation:

There hasn't ever really been an "official" explanation of these
sounds (described as whistling and buzz-saw sounds). But most scientists
offer that it could be attributed to either radio interference in the
lander or perhaps an artifact of the Sun's solar wind.

22 August 2014

The video is in Spanish, but details in English are available at The History Blog -

Restorers from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History
(INAH) working on a polychrome statue of the Christ of Patience have
found eight human teeth in the figure’s mouth.
These types of statues often have teeth, but they’re carved out of wood
or bone either as a plate or as individual teeth. This is the first
time actual human teeth have been found...

According to Fanny Unikel, head restorer of INAH’s Restoration Workshop
of Polychrome Sculpture of the National School of Conservation,
Restoration and Museology (ENCRyM), the teeth were probably donations
made by devout parishioners, a practice seen frequently with far less
painful materials like hair for wigs or clothing...

The dental implant Christ is one of a group of 17th and 18th century
statues of the saints belonging to the church of San Bartolo
Cuautlalpan, a farming community in the central Mexico municipality of
Zumpango...

Not hunters in blinds, or people hunting for blinds. The BBC has a report on blind hunters:

In the US, being blind is no bar to owning and carrying firearms. The blind people who do it say they are simply exercising their constitutional right, and present no danger to the public....

The day of the test came, and McWilliams duly went along to the police firing range with a friend who was also trying for a permit. The targets were half-size cut-outs of assailants, positioned seven yards (6.4m) away. McWilliams fired a series of shots with a .357 magnum, all of which landed in the heart region of his target. Clearly, he knew what he was doing...

Concealed carry permits - the licences required to carry a gun in public - are issued at state level, and the criteria and rules vary across the US. While there is nothing in North Dakota's statutes to prevent a blind person - or a person with any physical disability - carrying a gun, in Florida, for example, a "physical inability to handle a firearm safely" is listed as a reason for ineligibility. Yet even there, a blind person with a North Dakota licence would still be able to carry his or her gun, since Florida recognises permits from that state. ..

It's even more straightforward for blind people to own guns if they are content to leave them at home. In most states, you don't need to perform a shooting test or get a licence to buy a gun. Consequently, no-one knows how many blind Americans own guns for home defence, target practice or hunting.
Carey McWilliams started hunting in 2008. When ducks fly across the sky, he says, they make a sound like bicycle tyres on a pavement, and he traces them with the barrels of his rifle. For other types of hunting, such as stalking elk, he goes out with a companion, who whispers directions - up a bit, left a bit, right a bit - but who is not permitted to touch his weapon. ..

Since then, McWilliams has killed a black bear and is now set on African game. He owns "eight or nine" guns, including an AR-15 machine gun...

At the same time, McWilliams says again and again that he would only use his weapon on someone at point blank range - "I consider my gun a blade with a bang." That is the only way, he says, that he can be sure he is under real attack and - his acoustic shooting skills notwithstanding - pick out his assailant.
To minimise danger to passers-by, he says his gun is loaded with frangible ammunition, which would be of no danger after exiting an assailant's body. "Surgeons absolutely hate those type of shots that I use because they do a lot of a damage internally," he says. "It would make a bullet wound about the size of a dime and an exit wound about the size of a baseball, and wouldn't go very far beyond that."

The men had been working at the property, situated in a village near Les
Andelys and Vernon, for several days when they came across the hidden trove,
estimated to be worth more than €900,000 (£700,200), hidden in glass jars...

Upon closer inspection, the workers unearthed several large glass jars
containing 16 gold bars weighing 2.2lbs each, and 600 gold coins from 1924
and 1927. The stash had probably hidden for safekeeping during the Second
World War, according to Paris Normandie.

They didn't tell the homeowner, opting instead to divide up the treasure. Then...

...tax
officials homed in them after one of the men began depositing high-value
cheques, including one for €270,000.

Showing once again how utterly, abysmally stupid some thieves are. But I'll bet there are quite a few family fortunes that were created not by a hardworking ancestor, but by a lucky and discreet one. And I'm sure there are more stashes like this one scattered throughout the continent.

The StarTribune notes that this "sport" is gaining in popularity on Minnesota lakes.

A jet pack mounts onto his feet in heavy bindings that look like massive
snowboard boots. Water pressure from a hose hooked into a water scooter
lifts him into the air, allowing him to hover over the water, then dive
or do back flips overhead...

It doesn’t come cheap, though. With the jet ski and
all the equipment, he said it can quickly add up to $20,000. In two
years of owning flyboards, he’s run through 10 water scooter engines due
to the extra wear it takes with the flyboards.

He rents
them out for $299 an hour. But more and more people are curious about
the unusual sport, with Jansen doing 3,000 rentals last year.

I'm not thrilled by this development because I've never been a fan of the noise created by jet skis. And I notice that every video I've found replaces ambient sound with hard rock to mask that noise.

If you own a house long enough, most of the components will need to be repaired or replaced (a fact often overlooked by young couples eager to purchase as much home as they can afford). Take my driveway. Please.

Our house is only about 20-25 years old, situated near the crest of a hill overlooking woods. It's clear that some regrading of the lot was necessary to position it where it is. The driveway has a series of concrete slabs separated by tiny expansion grooves. Over the past decade or so, some of the slabs have begun to shift. These depressions first make themselves manifest in the winter when you are shoveling snow vigorously and the shovel comes to a sudden stop, sending a shudder through your body.

What's happening underneath may represent a "settling" of fill originally used to level the ground or perhaps some erosion as rainwater and winter meltwater work their way between the slabs, perhaps exacerbated by the burrowing of critters like chipmunks or the action of the roots of some nearby very large trees.

The traditional repair method is to hire a construction firm to jackhammer out the concrete, adjust the base as necessary and then pour new slabs. The alternative is "mudjacking" (sandjacking, slabjacking). This involves drilling a small hole in the concrete slabs and injecting under hydraulic pressure a material (originally mud or sand, but more recently a polyurethane foam) which fills the space and then lifts the slab until it is flush with its neighbors. (details at the link)

"Jacking" the slabs back up is generally faster, less labor intensive, less disruptive, and less expensive (probably by a factor of 3-5X - I'm still studying that) than removal and replacement of the driveway. But when slabs are cracked (as some of ours are), there is a risk that the segments will separate, and even a smooth lift of an intact slab may not align perfectly with all the neighboring ones.

I'm writing this post to encourage readers who have dealt with similar driveway/sidewalk problems to respond with comments (for me and for other readers who have - or will someday have- the same problem to deal with), because this isn't the kind of information one learns in school. Success stories and horror stories are equally welcome.

The cricket fan, who lives in India,is unable to do many basic tasks – including tying his shoes laces – and
has been bullied and shunned most of his life.

He said: "I do not go to school because the teacher says other kids are
scared of my hands.

"Many of them used to bully me for my deformity. They would say 'let's
beat up the kid with the large hands'."

The physician in the video is hopelessly out of his depth. This is in no way a case of acromegaly (which is also not a disease of the thyroid). Note the boy also has engorgement of the tissues of his upper chest. I would favor a disorder of his lymphatic system - genetic rather than parasitic because of the early onset.

Recent research suggests that tuberculosis spread by seals may have been responsible for the deaths of millions of Native Americans in pre-contact America.

Disease-riddled Europeans, carrying tuberculosis across the Atlantic, have
long been blamed for wiping out huge populations of Native Americans.

But new research has found that the deadly bugs which killed millions were
probably spread by seals and sea lions, long before Christopher Columbus
first arrived in the New World in 1492.

A study which looked at tuberculosis strains in bones discovered in Peru found
they were closely linked to those found in sea mammals.

The research shows that tuberculosis is likely to have spread from humans in
Africa to seals and sea lions, who then carried the disease to South America
and transmitted it to Native populations long before Europeans landed on the
continent...

"Our results show unequivocal evidence of human infection caused by sea
lions and seals in pre-Columbian South America.

“Within the past 2,500 years, the marine animals likely contracted the disease
from an African host species and carried it across the ocean to coastal
people in South America.”

I can't comment on the history of South America; in North America it's true that there was evidence of depopulation (in the desert Southwest and at Cahokia) before the arrival of Europeans), but there is also well-documented eyewitness evidence of the ravages of diseases brought by the first Europeans.

I don't doubt that seals may have spread mycobacterial disease to humans (perhaps nontuberculous mycobacteria, labeled "tuberculosis" in the article), but I can't envision any mycobacteria (even M.Tb) causing the biblical-level depopulations experienced in North America.

On June 17, 2011 the monument was painted overnight by unknown artists, who "dressed" the Soviet Army soldiers as American comics heroes and characters: Superman, Joker, Robin, Captain America, Ronald McDonald, Santa Claus, Wolverine, The Mask, and Wonder Woman,
with a caption underneath which translates as "Abreast with the Times"
(in Bulgarian "V krak s vremeto", literally "In pace with time").
The monument was cleaned in the late hours of June 20, 2011. The event
was widely covered by the international media and provoked serious pro
and anti-Russian discussion in the Bulgarian society. The story was filmed in the short documentary In Step With The Time directed by Anton Partalev and includes anonymous interviews with the artists. The film won the second prize in 2013 IN OUT FESTIVAL in Poland.

Community Health Systems, which operates 206 hospitals across the United
States, announced on Monday that hackers recently broke into its
computers and stole data on 4.5 million patients.

Hackers have gained access to their names, Social Security numbers, physical addresses, birthdays and telephone numbers.

Anyone
who received treatment from a network-owned hospital in the last five
years -- or was merely referred there by an outside doctor -- is
affected.

The large data breach puts these people at heightened
risk of identity fraud. That allows criminals open bank accounts and
credit cards on their behalf, take out loans and ruin personal credit
history.

"Tai-wiki-widbee" is an eclectic mix of trivialities, ephemera, curiosities, and exotica with a smattering of current events, social commentary, science, history, English language and literature, videos, and humor. We try to be the cyberequivalent of a Victorian cabinet of curiosities.

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About Me

I'm using an old photo of my grandfather as an avatar; he would have been amused.
Old friends, classmates, students, former colleagues, or distant relatives are welcome to email me via retag4726 (at) mypacks.net